


Never Forget

by confusedkayt



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-20
Updated: 2011-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-21 14:04:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confusedkayt/pseuds/confusedkayt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles has the luxury of ignorance.</p><p>I hope the timeline is clear from the story, but in case this is helpful:<br/>i.  During the Bromance World Tour<br/>ii.  Immediate aftermath of Shaw’s attack on the CIA facility<br/>iii.  After the beach scene, before Erik et. al pay a visit to Emma</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Forget

**Author's Note:**

> So. This got _very_ heavy and there are a couple of things I want to make folks aware of before they decide to read. This is especially heavy on the discussion of Nazi symbols in the movie and while I tried like hell to be sensitive I may have tripped over the line and would love to hear any suggestions on where things have gone too far and need softening. Also, I used a period-appropriate racial term that scans as all wrong today.

i. Erik

Charles has the luxury of ignorance.

Erik knows that’s unfair. As always, with Charles, there’s much more to it than that. Their experiments, if you can call them that – brief, heady moments where he ruthlessly seals his thoughts as best he can in soldered tin jars of the imagination and lets Charles slip into his mind like an old shoe – have always let him learn more about Charles then Charles learns about him. Charles is too much of a gentleman to push, too open by half to anyone he’s put into a position to push in turn. Erik’s allowed to feel the push-push-push others exert on Charles with their mere presence, impressions and feelings and petty concerns steering Charles like a stick in the river, never more so than when he’s muzzy with drink. A pub teeming with covetous college boys would bump him inexorably toward the most buxom coed in the room, crowding out the whispered wants in his own mind. Too-soft eyes, too-soft stance, the soft o he makes with his red, red mouth, fingers that linger longer than they should on Erik’s wrists and shoulders would tell him all he needs to know even if he’d never seen cool blue memories of pickups that end with chaste kisses in doorways shot through with hot red streaks of half-remembered initiations that taste truer than the ghost of any feminine kiss.

His ignorance, his lack of caution… Just one more luxury Charles claims that Erik can never touch. Erik’s stance is ironed ramrod straight, controlled just as his gaze is controlled, as his life is controlled because he’ll be damned if he gives anyone, anyone another excuse. Even now his stomach clenches with remembered fear that Herr Doktor will know, he’ll see, he’ll see that Erik’s jacket should bear another hateful triangle alongside the three that scream Juden and that might be just enough to send him straight to even worse places where he’ll have no chance to fight. No one talks of them, even now, no pink triangles on the news because even here in this land of the free it’s enough to put them behind bars for being as they are – as he is, as Charles is, as they are, right this very moment as they clink champagne flutes and sit just slightly too close together on the hotel sofa.

But Charles’ ignorance is safety, almost as sure as Erik’s control, enough to forever keep them from closing that last half-inch.

~~~  
ii. Charles

Something’s very wrong indeed. He can see smoke – so much, too much for a little mishap or an experiment – but much worse is what he can’t sense, the constant press of busy official minds is too slow, almost gone, far too few minds and those thrum with anxiety and activity. Carefully, carefully, he’ll peel back his tight control and just see, just a little peek to see what’s wrong…

It hits so hard, so very, unbearably hard, hard as the concrete slamming into his knees – when did he drop, when did Erik’s hands come to rest on his shoulders, shaking with the effort it takes Erik to keep them flat and comforting but those hands are calling at his buttons, the itchy iron in his blood, a scrabbling distraction from the shaky shield he’s got to keep up because Alex is… The children are…

 _CHARLES!_

It’s too loud, another jolting terror, but he can see that Erik’s mouth work, manufacturing physical shouts that he didn’t, can’t, hear, and Alex…

 _CHARLES._ Calmer now, an icy terrible calm and his mind recoils even as he clings because Erik is cold but he’s solid and still. _What’s the threat. Tell me where is the threat._

“Gone,” and his breath is loud in the air, Erik’s hand is gone, too, touching his temple like he’s not sure whether it was out loud or just in his mind. _Gone, they’re gone. And Darwin…_

Erik’s gasp, his white pressed lips, too-stark reminders that Charles has got to get himself _under control_ because now he’s gone and done it, bounced Alex’s _guiltshamefeargrief_ right at the man least in need of another stark dose of that kind of reality.

And then he’s staring at a spreading pool of bile and brandy, his retching barely registering in his own mind because Erik’s spilling all over the place, _guiltshameresolve_ because he thought… he’d been afraid… he’d _known_ that Shaw would do it, make the example he wanted to make, it was always to be Darwin because for all he was a mutant he was still a negro and Shaw… Erik’s mind is screaming, can’t forget, can’t forget that Shaw was – is – a _Nazi_ , believed it, through and through, not just because it was convenient but because he _believed._

A tsunami of sick fear – where’s Angel, can’t feel her, the only one of them that doesn’t have blue blue eyes and Erik’s touching his face now, flat cold hands radiating flat cold calm, bracing rage, rising steady as an anchor as Charles masters his own legs, his own mind, enough to send Erik some kind of coherent picture of where the children huddle, terrified, at the ruined entrance of the facility that had felt like home.

~~~  
iii. Erik  
His blood-slick hands are shaking on Shaw’s helmet, hard enough to attract Raven’s – Mystique, Mystique, there’s no hiding now and he’ll pay her the courtesy of using the name she’s chosen – attention. Mystique, so beautiful and Charles can’t see it, her own g-ddamn brother can’t see it, too intent on hiding and keeping the world, himself, all of them wrapped in blissful peaceful ignorance, just following the orders pressed on him by the world and g-d, his blood, Charles, Charles, his _blood…_

Mystique’s eyes are on the helmet now, her fascinated, horrified eyes and his stomach drops because the blood is seeping off his hands, up the helmet, staining it rusty iron red and it’s horrible, horrible and _right_ that he’ll wear what he’s done to Charles on the very thing that keeps him out, safe and ignorant of what Erik wants to do. Has done.

Her hand’s out as though to touch, to comfort and he jerks back, a feral growl he didn’t know he could produce sending her backing slowly out of the room, away from the spreading red and it’s not enough, not going to be enough.

Teeth tear at his thumb and he’s mingling with Charles, sick parody of what they could have, should have. He’ll regret it, g-d knows he’ll regret using anything _they_ made but it’s his, it’s him, they can’t rip it from him any more than they can excise his Jewish blood and he does it before he can think the better of it because he wants… He wants them (him) to see. Front, center, protecting his brain from Charles, Charles who it ought to belong to… Right there, for all to see, an oxidized pink triangle.


End file.
